


Apocalypse Smile

by i3ernadette



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Angel the Series
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-09-16
Updated: 2010-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i3ernadette/pseuds/i3ernadette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander, Willow, Buffy and Dawn are the most effective team the new Watcher's Council can field, Xander's been through the wars, and Angel, Spike and crew are coming to visit after having literally disappeared. The Scoobies have a psychic tie that causes interesting problems. (gradual S/X)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Standard field teams for the International Watcher's Council operate with two Slayers, a witch, and a Watcher.  
The premier team takes on the biggest bads with the first – and strongest – Slayer, arguably the world's most powerful witch, and a one-eyed carpenter. For some reason, the villains always go for the carpenter.  
"Not. A good. Idea!" Buffy swings the demon wizard by one four-foot-long, scaled and clawed arm, pounding him from desk to wall to ceiling of his tiny preparation chamber.  
Willow stands with her back to them, filling the doorway to the massive ritual hall with tendrils of blue lighting that arc away only to return and dance over her white buzz-cut, to crawl from the corners of her iris-less eyes, and to ripple the grey silk tunic and tights she wears.  
In the centre of the hall, under Willow's watchful eye, Xander rolls onto his stomach from where he has been thrown and pushes himself to his knees, then his feet. He grins up at Willow with a green-hazed eye and teeth outlined with blood.  
"Party time."  
Willow nods and he spits excess blood to the side. With a twitch of the witch's fingers, the small puddle begins to hiss and bubble, causing the horde of demon drones who fill the hall, and who had stood indecisively silent since the strange one-eyed man had been thrown from their master's sanctuary, to draw back in trepidation.  
He lets loose the yipping keen of his reclaimed hyena spirit and unsheathes his gladius, spinning in amongst the drones where he lashes out with his metal-bound left fist even as he beheads a demon.  
Willow watches for a moment, making sure that their information is correct and that the four-foot, vicious little scoundrels can be killed by decapitation, then nods happily and turns back to help Buffy with the questioning.  
///  
Xander's left hand had been chewed to uselessness nearly two years before during a rescue attempt. A group of Slayers-in-Training, trying to prove to Faith that they were ready to move out of her oh-so-tender care and up to the big leagues with the combat-ready field teams, had taken bad intel and found themselves in the midst of a Suvolte nest. They'd at least left a note, so when the girls were reported missing, Faith had rounded up Robin and Xander – who was visiting the Cleveland training academy – and headed out after them.  
Three of the girls had been easy to extract, but Xander headed into the cave after the fourth while Faith reamed the others out and Robin called back to the complex for either a witch with serious fireball capacity or a handful of grenades.   
Their initial arrival had driven back most of the demons, but the remaining SIT had had the bad fortune to fall into an egg pit. Her warmth had instigated the hatching, and by the time Xander found her the girl was hunched into a ball, a bloody, whimpering, gnawed-on mess. When Xander extended a hand to give her a boost out, some of the hatchlings leapt from her unprotected back and arms to his hand and began tearing at the thin flesh. He screamed, prompting Faith and Robin to sprint in after him, but held fast. By the time the Slayer arrived, he was mewling with pain even as he knocked the hatchlings from himself and the SIT and back into the pit.  
The hatchlings couldn't bite through leather, so only the girl's back and arms were damaged – scars that never vanished entirely, even with Slayer healing – but eventually she could once more operate at one hundred percent.  
Xander's hand was another story.  
Flesh, tendon, and even bone on the back of his hand had been worried with small, sharp teeth, rendering his skilled hand virtually unusable. When the final verdict came in, and Willow had burst into tears and Faith, Buffy , Dawn and Giles been reduced to furious oaths, Xander had simply asked Willow to help him find a way.  
It was one of the SITs that gave them the idea, a newly-called inner-city girl who asked who the guy with one eye and a club hand thought he was fooling. His bones were already held in place with metal strips; Willow replaced them with thick bands of socketed titanium, heavy with spells for medical, martial, and aesthetic purposes, and the four original Scoobies devised a dozen fittings – spikes and ridged blades and shields – that could be slipped in easily and only removed with a simple spell.  
He had trained heavily for six months, fighting to overcome a left side that should be useless, until he declared himself fit for battle.  
By that time, Buffy had turned over leadership of the European field teams to Faith, who was sick of training and had fully schooled her replacements, and Willow had completed the more formal magic education she had been forced to put aside when the First rose and the Council fell apart, and the three Scoobies were reunited. Mostly they worked Western Europe and the United States, as the only two Watchers with whom they were willing to work were trained in Occidental nasties and prophecies, and Willow's magic didn't always work properly in areas steeped in mythos and mysticism other than her own.  
Xander worked surprisingly effectively in Africa, especially after reclaiming his hyena in a spirit-walk that one East African tribe had deemed necessary before they would trust him with the unprecedented four Slayers that lived in the six-hundred-strong village, but his ten months on the Dark Continent had left behind a well-connected network of Slayers, Seers, Shaman and Watchers who were more than holding their own.  
This night's work had kept them closer to home than most, just outside of Bath. A species of demon that hadn't been seen in almost a millennium, it operated as a hive with wizard, warrior, and drone classes all subject to the fancies of a vicious queen. Queen was, as their Watcher had put it, "not entirely accurate" terminology; queens could only reproduce with the queens of other hives if they wanted to breed anything but drones. This hive was apparently the last of its kind and had been reduced over centuries to the queen, a single wizard, and a veritable army of drones. Through centuries of stealth and subterfuge the wizard had kept his hive hidden and developed the magics necessary to adapt a human body to be the receptacle of a higher-caste demon.  
Buffy, Willow and Xander had interfered in the plan to convert the entire population of Bath into semi-sentient incubators, set to spawn the makings of a thousand new hives.   
A text generally considered worthless had been the source of the prophecy that had led to the night's battle, and Xander had taken out the sacrificial drones while Buffy and Willow dealt with the wizard. With his information, they found the nest and killed the queen, then offered the remaining drones the chance to continue their lives as they had been, living in secrecy and doing no harm to othes. Most had agreed, and Buffy and Xander had quickly dealt with any dissidents. From what they had seen, the colony should be extinct in thirty years.  
///  
Back at their London headquarters, Xander cleans his sword carefully before beginning the tedious process of stripping and cleaning the grooved metal ridges – sticking four inches from his hand, with slots three inches deep, he could use them as a swordbreaker or a weapon; Willow's spells kept the torque and pressure from wrenching at his bones – that he had worn for the fight. After a long shower, he pops in the flesh-tinted strips that keep the metal sockets in his hand clear when he isn't fighting. He is toweling off when Dawn barges into his room.  
"Dawnie!" He yelps, jerking the towel from his hair to around his waist.  
"Please," she rolls her eyes. "As if we didn't have bigger problems than your bits on display."  
Xander cocks an eyebrow and drops the towel, smirking when Dawn squeaks and shuts her eyes. "Problems?" He asks casually as he moves to get dressed. He sighs as he passes the comfortable pyjama bottoms on the bed, digging out socks, boxers, a faded pair of jeans, and a black T-shirt instead.  
"Angel's coming," Dawn bites out.  
The clothes hit the floor.  
"Angel's dead, Sunrise. Four years, now."  
Dawn scoffs and opens her eyes, gesturing for him to get dressed. "Apparently he's less dead than usual." She slumps to the edge of the bed and cradles her face in her hands, her long pink-streaked brown hair parting around her neck so the crest of the tattoo on her back, where it rises above the top of her blue camisole, is visible. And visibly inflamed.  
Xander tenses the muscles of his own back and winces – the burning he had thought was just after-effects of the night's workout is partially attributable to the rawness of his own tattoo. He opens the telepathic link a little, wary of being overloaded with someone's mind vomit, and is relieved to find everything dialed back to the low hum that connects them when they aren't actively seeking contact. Dawn and Willow are both expressing confusion and concern, and Willow is doing something hastily – probably dressing – but Buffy is furious. Xander blinks.  
"What's Buffy mad about?" He asks, pulling his shirt over his head and drawing on his socks. "Thought she'd be ecstatic."  
Dawn shrugs. "Sent me to get you; she's beyond pissed at Giles, though."  
Xander hmms and heads towards the door, only to be stopped by Dawn's hand on his arm. He looks at her and sees the brown leather patch in her hand.  
"Really?" He asks, putting it on. He always wore one around the baby Slayers or outsiders, but pretty much everyone but the Scoobies should be down for the night. More than that, she had given him the patch that Willow had spelled for battle.  
Between his innate empathic powers – whatever else they might do was unknown, but they were the reason his possessions were so much more powerful than might otherwise be expected – and the hyena, something strange had happened in the wake of losing an eye. The benefits she gave him waxed and waned with his emotional or physical stress; the first outward expression of her power was a dull green haze over his remaining eye. That never changed, apparently signaling that his own sentience was in control of his actions. Gradually, though, a bright green witchlight gathered in his other socket, a phantom eye. He couldn't see through it , and it seemed to serve no purpose, but when he was angry it shone through most fabrics. His one attempt at a prosthetic eye had turned to dust in the socket as soon as one of his girls was in danger.  
Dawn nods in reply. "Really. If Buffy's this mad…" She shrugs, wincing pointedly as fabric scrapes over the raw flesh of her back.  
The tattoos are a year old, gotten to celebrate six months of working as a successful team. Theirs is, in fact, the only team that operated without their Watcher in the field. While Dawn is in incredible shape, she is still a slim young woman, without Buffy or Xander's supernatural advantages or Willow's heavy magical defenses.   
Her blood, though the ritual Glory had wanted it for is long past, is still a potent source of energy. An attempt of Willow's to use it in a spell had blown up her laboratory.  
Nevertheless, she is an incredibly effective Watcher. She observes battles through their eyes, occasionally even taking over someone's mouth to speak a necessary counterspell or ritual phrase. Her understanding of languages approaches Giles' own, and her worldview coincides more closely with the Scoobies' than Giles' ever could.  
The telepathy came first, Willow refining her initial skills until she could establish a permanent link between the four of them that could be closed off at will to anything but directed cries for attention; it would only have worked for a Watcher in whom they had absolute faith. Six months later, the four of them had chosen to commemorate their excellence as a team: Xander's idea had been met with unanimous approval and they had been inked with black outlines of the tarot cards that they had used to combine themselves to defeat ADAM. Xander was still the heart, Buffy the hand, and Willow the spirit, but Dawn became the mind. Soon after the tattoos had healed, they all discovered that they reacted to distress – the telepathic link, unless it was open, only transmitted direct contact. The tattoos reacted to emotional upheaval. Willow's and Buffy's are subdued by their innate power, Dawn's they treat as the baseline, and Xander's is enhanced by his empathy. And if the stinging between his shoulderblades is anything to go by, Buffy is getting angrier all the time.  
Xander and Dawn hit the bottom of the stairs, breaking past the silence barrier that permanently surrounds the Scoobies' conference room, just in time to hear Buffy reach the end of her tirade: "…and this kind of heavy-handed, Daddy-knows-best, self-serving _bullshit_ is why I booted the Council in the first place!" She breaks off, panting and glaring, while Giles escapes behind cleaning his glasses.  
Xander shoots a questioning look at Willow, who shrugs, face almost as white as her eyes and hair.  
Buffy catches the movement and smiles wryly. "Brace yourselves, kiddos. The first step's a doozy."  
Her eyes snap shut and the other three's quickly follow as images spill over the link  
 _The phone is ringing and Buffy is still downstairs, grabbing a snack before she heads to the shower.  
"I got it," she calls to Giles, still puttering around with Dawn and the debriefing reports, and picks up the phone.  
"Hello?"  
"Buffy?" And she's **shocked amazed hurt sad inlove inlove inlove ANGRY**  
"Who is this?" Words bitten out.  
"It's Angel, Buffy. I got your number from –" **hurt inlove angry**  
"Angel's dead."  
Laughter. "Really, really not. Look, Buffy, we got out of LA –"  
"Where?" And the world opens, things she hadn't thought to think about for four years. A while city, born and raised, gone and forgotten. Angel, gone, Willlow's magic failed failed failed, but no questions, no how or why. "Oh, god."  
"You didn't notice? Jesus, Buffy, a whole city got stuck halfway into a demon dimension; we had to take on Wolfram and Hart all over again to get ourselves out. Managed to… reverse it, I guess. Never happened. Except some of us had… contracts or something. Hell, we did, but we don't know if that's why… This whole thing makes no sense!" Frustration on the line, confusion. Buffy is shocked silent. "We've been fighting for ten years, Buffy. We finally win and… BAM! Back in the alley again, nothing ever happened, except it's four years later and Wesley's still a ghost, Illyria's still mostly Fred, and I'm still human!" **shock joy pain fear**  
"Human?" Buffy whispers, then rallies. "What the hell, Angel?" She demands, **anger anger fear**. "You were in that kind of trouble and you didn't even call? Maybe a heads up – hey, babe, we're headed into a fight that might suck LA into hell, just thought you should know!" Buffy's panting, anger sorrow anger  
"Right." And Angel's voice is bitter and cold. "Like you helped the last time? If you wouldn't help Fred – one of the best people I've ever met – because you didn't agree with my methods, why the hell would you help me when I needed you to do more than look something up in a damn book?"  
A rustle behind Buffy and she turns to see Giles leafing through a book. He looks up and smiles and an awful suspicion starts. "Giles, sit!" She demands. Surprised, he complies. Still keeping an eye on him, she returns her attention to the phone.  
"Angel, who is Fred?" **anger sorrow grief fear**  
He starts to scoff, but the tone of her voice sinks in and he answers bluntly instead. "Friend of Willow's, actually. Genius scientist, was trapped in a hell dimension for five years. We rescued her; when we came back…" He coughs. "You were dead."  
Buffy murmurs something mindless into the phone, **loss sorrow sympathy**  
"Anyway, she was great. Brilliant little Texan girl, loved tacos and Wesley and physics, she worked with us for three years. She ran the science lab when we took over Wolfram and Hart – which would be the reason for not helping us, by the way. Maybe trying to fight evil from the inside was a little naive, but dammit, it worked!"  
"Angel!" He's panting into the phone, and Buffy waits for his breathing to slow. "Tell me about Fred."  
"Right." He sighs. "We did psychic readings and established rules to weed out most of the big evil around the firm, but they're all lawyers and scientists – inherently evil or inherently smart. There was this guy in Fred's lab, Knox. In love with her, and an adherent to a religion that worships the Old Ones –"  
Buffy makes a questioning noise. Angel sighs.  
"Gods among demons, put into hibernation in tombs out at this place called the Deeper Well, always guarded. Knox got an Old One's – Illyria's – tomb out somehow, and Gunn got manipulated into unwittingly getting it through customs. It was left in the lab so Fred would investigate it, and she got infected –"   
"Wait, I thought you said Knox was in love with Fred?"  
"So in love he wanted his god to have her body." His voice breaks, half laugh, half sob. "It took days to kill her, Buffy, turned her insides to mush, scraped out her soul. We looked everywhere for help, but –"  
"You didn't come to me." **cold anger guilt sorrow**  
"We went to Giles! You were partying it up in Italy; what could you do?"  
"I was training Slayers in Scotland, you asshole! A year before you died – I mean, disappeared – I asked you to be my second front. I took what you gave me – on your word – and used it to save the world. What made you think I stopped trusting you, Angel?" **sorrow sorrow sorrow** "Maybe not with me, but with the world? With Fred?" Buffy sighs. "I am sorrier than I can say for Giles' mistakes, for his arrogance, and for whatever I did that made you think you couldn't ask me for help. You always can, and I'll always try."  
"Really?"  
"Really."  
Angel sighs, again, and Buffy is crying, glaring past tears at Giles' white face.  
"Can we come?"_  
The memory shuts off and Xander, Willow and Dawn all gasp. The download took only moments, but Giles is already watching them warily. Together they make a decision to deal with his betrayal later, and to address Angel's visit now.  
"Anything else, Buff?" Xander ask.  
She nods. "Spike's coming."  
He makes a face. "Sorry I asked. Wait, what is this? International Come Back from the Dead Day?"  
Buffy shrugs. "Angel kinda listed who was coming and hung up."  
"So unless he got a dog…" Dawn smacks him on the shoulder.  
"Actually," Giles interjects almost timidly, "Spike's essence was tied to the amulet. It was returned to Angel some months after the collapse of the Hellmouth, and Spike was released as a form of ghost. Eventually he was recorporealized.  
Buffy's face shuts down and Willow grabs her hand. Xander closes his eye and rubs the bridge of his nose; flashes of green light show as the patch shifts.  
"And you know this how?" Dawn's voice is frigid. Angel had been her older sister's messed up entanglement, but for better or worse, Spike is family. Xander, of all people, echoes that sentiment through the link.  
"We contacted Angel to help us track down Dana, of course, and Andrew saw Spike. He requested that his presence be kept secret, that his sacrifice not be mitigated, as it were, by his subsequent return. Later he and Angel attempted to track you down in Rome, Buffy. They saw your double out dancing with the Immortal, I believe."  
"And Andrew didn't set him straight?"  
"By that time his intentions were already dubiously murky, Buffy. We couldn't trust him not to turn that information over to someone else."  
"Did he?"  
"What?" Giles polishes his glasses again, eyebrow arched.  
"Did anyone from Wolfram and Hart – did anyone, period – go after the fake me in Rome?"  
"Oh." Giles blinks. "Well, no."  
Buffy swallows.  
Xander looks at Giles and shakes his head, the disappointment he radiates somehow sharper than the girls' condemnation, then speaks. "Well. Spike's alive, Angel's alive, anything else?"  
Willow's hand tightens on Buffy's. "I think… I think Angel might be really alive. Human alive."  
The others nod, even as Giles gapes at her. "Yeah, I caught that too." Dawn smiles at Buffy.  
"So we only need to stock blood for one vamp, which is all to the good. Any idea when they're getting here?"  
"This evening, I think," Buffy answers.  
"So soon?"   
Her smile is slight and crooked, but there. "I think Angel owns a jet."  
///  
They lock down the girls' dormitories at sunset, send home any lingering staff early, and are waiting in the living room, pretending to watch TV.  
"Y'know," starts Xander, pointing at the television where a group of young adults were sitting around a table in a café, "our lives would make a damn good TV show."  
"Highly unbelievable," Dawn scoffs.  
"Cognitive estrangement," he retorts. Willow marks an invisible point in the air.  
"Huh-wha?" Buffy asks, turning to the inane discussion as something to keep her occupied.  
"Cognitive estrangement, Buff. Hallmark of science fiction. Like a metaphor, really."  
"Things that are different from everyday life – robots, or" Willow chuckles, "magic or vampires – are added to a story so that people distance themselves mentally from the characters. That's cognitive estrangement."  
Xander picks it back up. "If an author wants to say something that will make people mad, or to criticize something, he can set it in another world. Then whatever he's talking about, or making fun of, doesn't get anyone angry because he's not talking about them, see?"  
Buffy is shaking her head when the doorbell rings.  
"Oh, goddess," Willow murmurs.  
Buffy bounces to her feet and freezes, **_panic_** raging through the half-open links and everyone winces.  
"Chill, Buffy!" Dawn rolls her eyes. "Xan and Wills can let them in, and you and I can grab drinks or something."  
"Drinks?" Buffy whimpers.  
"A little cool-down time," Xander offers.  
"Right," she nods. "Drinks." She grabs Dawn's hand and quick-marches towards the kitchen.  
 _Don't forget the blood_ , he reminds them on his way to the door, then freezes. Willow smiles ruefully and grabs his hand for a quick squeeze, then he is opening the door just as Spike is reaching for the bell again.  
"Oh, god."  
"Oh, goddess."  
And then they are reaching for the two vampires at the front of a very small herd of exhausted warriors, Willow wrapping her arms around Angel's waist and Xander cupping Spike's cheek for a long moment before ducking his head.  
"Come in, Spike."  
Before he can move, Willow ducks under Xander's arm and repeats her limpet impression. "You are always welcome where we are," she mumbles into his chest.  
She disengages and Xander moves out of the way, but not before he sees Spike blinking rapidly.  
"Anyone else need an invitation?" He asks Angel as the ex-vampire steps into the foyer, looking over the four people behind him.  
"Shouldn't think so," Angel grins.  
"Not even you, I see. So if you were Deadboy before, does this make you Un-Deadboy now?"  
Willow and Spike both chuckle and even Angel's lips twitch. "I had hoped you'd matured."  
"What am I, wine?"  
"Never happen, Peaches."  
Xander and Spike speak together, grin at one another, and then Xander sobers.  
"Angel? Um, Buffy's in the kitchen warding off a panic attack, but I think I'm the one who has to say this first. Because, well, I didn't like you. Didn't trust you around my girls. Don't even know if I'll like you now, though it's damned good to see you. But… I'm sorry. For everything that made you think you couldn't come to us for help. That we didn't find out what was happening on our own. That we let Giles get out of hand. And I'm sorry for your losses, the time and pain and loved ones. But… I wanted to let you know. I might not trust you with my girls, but I don't trust anyone with my girls. I do trust you with anyone else."  
Angel blinks for a minute, speechless, then extends his hand. As they shake, he raises an eyebrow. "Your girls?"  
"Us." Buffy and Dawn had appeared in the doorway, and Willow had slipped over to stand beside them.  
"Y'know," Dawn twists her face into an exaggeratedly pensive expression, "I feel like we should strike some poses or something, a little Xander's Angels, maybe?" They were laughing when Spike got his voice back.  
"Niblet?" Her head shoots up.  
"Spike?" They all watch as his presence finally sinks in for Dawn.  
She leaps on him, long legs around his waist, arms around his neck, her hair in his mouth and she's laughing and crying even as she chants his name. He laughs, his own eyes suspiciously wet, and squeezes.  
"Um," Xander starts, looking around. "How about the rest of you come with me and Willow? We can do introductions, maybe some refreshments or you guys can clean up?" He smiles as he gathers up the four accompanying Spike and Angel and he and Willow lead them into the living room. He shuts his link down hard to suppress any hint of what he feels when he looks over his shoulder to see Spike clinging to Dawn.


	2. Chapter 2

The vampires – ex and otherwise – and their retinue had been in state for over a week. Giles was still banished to the American offices, presumably until Angel's team decided where to set up their new agency. Angel was, unsurprisingly, spending a great deal of time with Buffy and the two seemed to be working their way towards some accord. Dawn was clinging to Spike, both of them working with the Slayers, watching television, or sitting and talking. Willow spent most of her time in the library with Wesley and the Fred/Illyria hybrid that genuinely wigged Xander out. He understood the basics of the two personalities that had melded to create the seeming girl – to whom Wesley's ghost was apparently tied – but the inconsistency of her behavior set him on edge. In an attempt to give everyone space to reconnect, and to figure out his own confusing reactions to everyone's presence, Xander spent most of his time with Gunn.  
The first two days were pretty laid-back, as the hunter-cum-lawyer was too worn out to do much more than eat, sleep, and watch old action movies. After a few days, they started punctuating their downtime with tours of the estate, exhibitions by the Slayers-in-Training, sparring matches, and ended each night with beers, movies, and story-time. Xander gave Gunn a crash-course on the Scooby history, the Council, and how they all connected to the fang-gang. In turn, Gunn provided a recap of the history of Angel investigations, including the life and times of one Cordelia Chase.  
"That's enough!" Dawn barges into the room shouting, Spike following bewilderedly.  
Xander and Gunn, sprawled in opposite corners of the giant couch, both jump and turn to stare.  
Xander blinks. "What's enough?" He grins. "Listening in on Big Sis and her melanin-seeking Romeo?" He exchanges a smirk with Gunn – Buffy and Angel have spent every day outside, and Angel seems convinced that, if he abuses his Irish pallor enough, he will eventually tan. Either than, or he enjoys the aloe cream that Buffy rubs him down with every night.  
Dawn just glares. "Not hardly, secret boy."  
Xander wrinkles his brow at her, obviously confused. "Dawn, what –"  
"Nuh-uh." She forestalls him with a waggling finger. "At first, I thought the itch was just – everyone being all 'yay' about the invasion of the not-so-dead. But I took a little peek and guess what? Everyone's chill in the headspace – except you. You barely exist! All I can tell is that you're still alive, while the rest of us have given up on wearing bras! But we're giving you your space, whatever, yeah? But then I'm watching The Young Ones and thinking I might finally have an explanation for Spike when BAM! Instant inferno! Now there's hot chocolate all over my duvet, Willow dropped a book through Wes and onto Illyria's foot, and Buffy almost staked an SIT! Explain." She has overridden surprised coughing, attempted questions and speculative looks in her race to the finish, but now that she's done everyone is quiet while she arches an eyebrow at Xander, Xander stares at his hands, and Gunn and Spike exchange shrugs.  
"Want me…" Xander gestures at his head, and Dawn shakes her head fiercely in response.  
"Not a chance, bucko. I like my cerebellum un-sizzled."  
Xander rolls his eye. "It can't be that bad."  
Again with the eyebrow and, without warning, Dawn turns her back and pulls her New Pornographers T-shirt over her head. Spike barks her name but she just rolls her eyes and holds her shirt to her chest. Gunn and Xander are too distracted by the swollen red welts that underlay the lines of her tattoo.  
"Shit, sorry." Xander turns her around, leaving Spike to hiss in outraged sympathy as he catches sight of her back. "Are they…?" He gestures upwards, and Dawn nods. "Sorry, girls."  
Dawn reaches out to touch his maimed left hand, thumb running along the smooth, glamoured bands that Willow had whipped up for 'company' use. "Xan, it's okay. Just tell us what happened."  
Xander sighs and sits back on the couch, pulling Dawn with him so she is perched sideways on his lap. He stretches to grab his cool beer bottle off of the coffee table and begins running it over her back. Spike moves further into the room and perches on the arm of the couch nearest Gunn. "It's just buildup, I guess." He sighs. "Being so angry at Giles, so happy for Buff and you, glad they got out, guilty we didn't help, then you and him," he jerks his chin and Spike, earning a surprised look from Dawn, "confusing me and… Cordy's dead."  
"What?" Dawn twists a little to stare at him, Willow's awareness in her eyes.  
Xander nods. "Five years ago, I guess. And it occurred to me – silly thing, really – that anyone I've ever been involved with has tried to kill me or is dead. Even you, Wills." Dawn nods sadly and stretches an arm to give him an awkward little half-hug, hissing at the movement.  
"I think you guys should cut me out for a bit, until I get my head on straight."  
"Xander, no!" Buffy answers before Dawn can, as she is carefully carried in by a thoroughly baffled-looking Angel.  
"You hurt?" Xander asks, shifting Dawn and preparing to rise.  
"Nope." Buffy hops down and pats Angel on the shoulder. "Didn't want to miss out on the convo, but thought it'd be better if I were here to protest any really stupid decisions in person."  
Xander growls defensively. "It's not stupid, Buffy. Look how much damage I did tonight! You could've killed someone, or gotten sliced-n-diced yourself! Willow can just take me out while I figure this out, then you can – "  
"I can't." Dawn pauses and glares at nothing for a moment, then sighs and resumes speaking. "Sorry. But I'm pretty sure that this is permanent. The tattoos have become the physical manifestation of a purely magical phenomenon, and once something like this is corporealized it can only be or not be; it can no longer be modified."  
"Willow's right," Buffy says, to their audience's obvious confusion. "Well, I'm assuming she's right about the mojo. But if our options are either linked with you being all nervous-breakdown-boy, or apart with you being a quieter nervous-breakdown-boy, I'll pick linked."  
"We can help!" Dawn's voice is her own again. "We'll rest up tonight – and I'm so stealing Angel's aloe vera – and tomorrow, Xander," she glares at him, "we're going spelunking."  
Xander moans. "Don't I get a say in this?"  
"No!" Dawn and Buffy answer simultaneously.  
Xander nods resignedly and Dawn grins. Buffy rolls her eyes and leaves the room, presumably to help Willow explain things to Wes and Fred, but Angel stays behind. "Um," he begins tentatively, "what's going on?"  
///  
Xander and Dawn gave a very brief overview of their Scooby connection and how they thought it had worked through their four respective powers – Slayer strength, empathy of the One who Sees, Willow's balance of blood-and-bone shamanism and the more intellectual sorcery, and the Key's thus-far unexplored effects – to manifest unexpectedly in their respective tattoo-cum-totems. Something about Xander – what they were choosing to call empathy – led him to be both a stronger receiver and broadcaster of emotions than the others. When he had shut himself almost entirely out of the telepathic connection while he tried to make sense of whatever problems he was having, those suppressed emotions leaked out as gradually increasing agitation through the tattoos. When he had learned of Cordy's death, that agitation had spiked, leading to the intervention.  
"Maybe the boy's right," Spike interjects reluctantly. "This 'broadcasting' he's doing isn't just causing you pain; it's putting you in danger! Buffy could get distracted again, Willow could lose her place in the mojo, anything."  
Xander, Angel and Gunn nod even as Dawn vehemently shakes her head. "You guys don't get it. And Xander's too good at picking the rest of us up. He gets actual emotions, while we…" She huffs in frustration and turns aside so she can pull her shirt back on. "It's only conflicting emotions – confusion – that cause pain. Like when Buffy found out about you guys. She was seriously happy, but at the same time she hadn't known you were in trouble, and then seriously day of wrath that Giles had cut you off when you needed help. That made us all itch. And what we're doing tomorrow, spelunking, is just… going into Xander's head so he can talk out what he's feeling. Once he has a chance to…. catalogue it all, I guess, he'll chill. I was just angry because he's the one who's always harping at us to not let things progress so far, and he could have put us in danger."  
"So the boy's got to put all his deepest darkest on display for you lot to coo and cringe over? Yeah, not a clue why he might be a bit reluctant."  
Dawn glares at Spike, but Xander offered up a shy smile in his direction, obviously surprising the vampire. "It's not quite that bad, really. It's like there's an anteroom, where the girls have free access, but to go anywhere else in my head they have to be invited. Like psychic vampires." Dawn scowled. "I didn't know it had gotten so bad, is all." He turns to face Angel. "I wouldn't consciously put Buffy in danger like that."  
Angel looks Xander over slowly, confused by the hints of an actual man behind the so-familiar Xander shell. He nods in acknowledgement, then asks his own question. "If the tattoos only hurt when your emotions are all mixed up, what do they feel like the rest of the time?"  
Xander shrugs. "It doesn't feel like anything, to me. Nothing physical. It's just a medium for the transmission of emotions – who's angry, happy, sad, y'know."  
Dawn shook her head again. "Like I said, he's too perceptive. The rest of us get hints of each other, but mostly we feel Xander. It influences the way we feel."  
Xander starts. "It what?" He demands.  
Dawn laughs. "Nothing bad. When you're happy, it's like…. Having chocolates delivered to you at work. Unexpected little joy-inducing presents. Angry gets us focused. You've got that 'whatever hurts me or mine is going to hurt before it dies' thing going on, and we get a dose of it. Everything else we all experience differently, but nothing detrimental."  
"Except now!" Spike objects.  
"Except now." Dawn rolls her eyes. "But tonight we will chill, tomorrow we will deal, and tomorrow night we'll show you LA rejects why the four of us are the best."  
"Speaking of which," Buffy interjects from the door as Willow, Wes and Fred enter the room. "Vi wants to know how many sweeper teams we need?"  
"First question," Dawn retorts, and turns her attention to Angel's crew. "You guys want to play tomorrow?"  
"What's the game?" Gunn asks, pulling his legs in a little so Fred can sit beside him. Willow plops onto the couch between her and Xander, pulling Dawn's feet into her lap, and Wes appears to lean against the wall beside Angel.  
"Pretty basic," Dawn answers. "Cleveland house just graduated its qualified Slayers and sent them out. We got reports that the nightlife's acting up. It always happens when the trained Slayers leave, and Vi and Rona can't really put the smack-down on the locals while they're escorting a small horde of newbies. So we go in and knock the upstarts back a bit; by the time they're ready to make serious trouble again, the SITs are ready to handle the routine stuff."  
Gunn shakes his head. "Look, Xan's given me some basic background, but what the hell?"  
Buffy laughs. "First, you guys want in for tomorrow? Heavy-duty patrol, maybe a few surprises, 'sall."  
"I'm in!" Spike is practically bouncing. Angel nods slowly in agreement.  
"I will remain behind," Fred says, her voice pure Illyria. "My current line of investigation appears most intriguing."  
Buffy shrugs and looks at Gunn, who grins. "Ah, hell, girl. I'm there."  
"Tell Vi two teams, Buff." Xander says; she nods and leaves to make the call.  
"We need backup for patrol?" Spike asks incredulously.  
Xander shakes his head. "Vi and Rona are in charge of Cleveland. They'll each take out a sweeper team – four girls too untrained to do a real patrol – and work the low-danger zones, just to keep an eye on things while we take the cemeteries and warehouses. With so many of us, we'll move faster and cover more ground, so we need fewer sweeper teams."  
Spike shrugs. "Fair enough. Now Chuckles asked about… whatever?"  
Willow grins at him and settles herself in storytelling mode. "OK. So. Five years ago, more or less, we activated the Slayer line. More informatively, we made it so that every girl who had the physiological and psychological capacity to carry the Slayer essence – called Potentials – became full-fledged Slayers. Because the Potentials we were fighting with were all in the fourteen-to-twenty age bracket, we assumed that the power would only go to girls like that. Unfortunately, those were the girls who could be called _naturally_ , by the death of an active Slayer. The spell we did was tied directly to a symbol of the Slayer's power, and was actually stronger than the original spell which created the Slayer. What this means for us is dozens of Slayer children and a handful of super-powered grannies."  
"Slayer babies?" Gunn demands, horrified.  
Willow laughs. "Thank the goddess, no. Apparently a child has to formulate a sense of self more complex than a baby's or a toddler's. Their powers usually activate at around seven or eight."  
"Tell me you don't make them fight." Angel's voice is cold, and the Scoobies stare at him in shock.  
"What the hell?" Buffy demands from the doorway. "We don't make _anybody_ fight!"  
"We find them," Dawn's voice is quiet. "If their parents are willing to retain custody, we send an older Slayer to stay with them for a few weeks to help the girl control her strength and work through the dreams. They usually stay around afterwards, to patrol and to help the child, unless there's already an active team in the area. Each Slayer has a panic button that instantly summons a teleport-capable patrol team, in case the child gets attacked. They go to summer camp, paid for by the Council, every year so that they don't feel as isolated."  
"Too many parents don't want their Slayers," Xander continues, "or react… poorly in other ways. Those girls, we take custody. There's a school for the youngest in every region – it's where the summer camp is held. In the event of imminent apocalypse, all non-combatants are automatically transported there, the defenses are that good. "He sighs and rubs his face with his bad hand. "At twelve, interested girls – and their families – can start reading up on the nasties and doing low-level training at home. We've gotten a few dozen Watchers that way, too."  
Buffy breaks in. "At sixteen, girls can go to one of the academies. If their parents object, we help the girl get emancipated; that's usually not a problem. The academies let the girls continue their educations, take vacations, and train up. They meet witches and Watchers and learn to patrol. Then, at eighteen – usually; it varies – the girl both finishes her education and transfers to a patrol team. College towns usually have a decent vamp population, and the Council pays for tuition of any Slayer who wants to continue their education. Slayers who actively patrol get room and board as well. Other girls travel with their teams, settle in hot spots, act as mentors for younger girls, or work for the Council in a support capacity. Adults who've been called are usually asked to complete some basic training, just to learn some self-control, and then can choose either to maintain or break ties with the Council."  
"Older Slayers, and the families of younger Slayers, have done a lot towards letting us operate the way we want, and towards helping us take care of all our girls," Dawn adds, smiling.  
"And an active Slayer can retire at any time – she has to give notice so she can be replaced, but that's all. More popularly – maybe twenty girls so far – is partial retirement. The Slayer gets a job or goes back to school, or the Council even finances small business loans, but she still does cursory patrols at night." Buffy's pride in what they have accomplished is obvious.  
"More pointily," Xander adds with a laugh, "the Cleveland house is the North American academy; Cleveland is on a Hellmouth. It's not as active as Sunnydale was, but has a higher oogity population. Which makes sense, as it's an actual city as opposed to a dinky little suburb."  
"And we're getting there how?" Gunn asks.  
Willow laughs. "We're gonna ride the Wiccan express."  
"Hey!" Dawn complains.  
"Dawn-star here's the key to the whole thing," Xander puns shamelessly, causing the girls to groan.  
"Say what now?" Spike demands sharply.  
Dawn grins. "I make a really sucky spell ingredient, on a ka-blooey level of suck, except for spells involving translocation. A little chanting, two drops of blood, and Willow's got enough lifting power to send half an army to the North Pole."  
"Not that I have!" Willow is quick to assure them. "And I wouldn't. At least not without proper clothing, maybe some food, and a darn good reason!"  
Gunn laughs, but Spike is obviously still angry. "Do a lot of blood-letting, figuring out what you can and can't do?" He growls.  
Dawn rolls her eyes. "No, Dad. I wanted to know if anything else about this Key thing was going to come back to bite me on the ass. Mostly the tests were non-invasive, but Willow drew one vial of blood, since it was the actual key to Glory's ritual." She shudders, and Willow pats her shins before speaking.   
"Her blood is mostly human, but it's got some energy field that we can't figure out. As long as Dawn is alive, even if the individual cells in the sample die, the energy stays. The travel spells thing was a lucky guess, based on the Key's original purpose. The only problem is that, once I activate her blood with a spell, I have to be sure to deplete the sample of its energy or things can go wonky."  
"But since Dawn doesn't usually travel with us, even a screw-up won't hurt her, OK?" Xander's question is unusually sharp, almost bitter, and draws everyone's surprised attention.  
"Yeah, Whelp, 'sfine. Thanks." Spike raises his hands in blatant placation.  
Xander rolls his eyes and shifts Dawn out of his lap, then stands. "Story-time over? Good. 'm gonna go for a run before bed." He stalks out of the room before anyone can answer, leaving a confused group behind him.  
Dawn, Willow and Buffy each carefully adjust their shirts over their throbbing backs, silently swearing to help their friend the next day.  
///  
 _"Welcome, ladies." Xander had been lying in bed for over an hour before he felt the soft mental knock of his girls, and the time had been amusingly spent. In honor of Spike's protest, he had carefully sculpted a comfortable sitting room for his visitors. Defying his SoCal heritage and the hyena that rode him, Xander had taken happily to the heavy Scottish winters at the European training academy. His sitting room, then, was at the base of a stone tower, a round room with a single door and an ancient, spiral staircase carved of smooth, heavy wood set a quarter-turn from the door. Opposite the door was a fireplace, the mantel at shoulder height, topped only with elegant shapes naturally carved of salt-bleached driftwood. The fourth quarter of the room was faced with unrealistically large windows that showed snow drifting past to dust already-whitened hills and hedges. Aside from these points of note, the only unchanging features of the room were a heavy couch and armchair in dark red denim, caddy-corner to each other and the fireplace. The floor was featureless, only giving the impression of dark, polished wood, and the walls seemed to be hung with tapestries which only hinted at shapes woven of dark colors.  
"Like what you've done with the place." Buffy grins at him as the three girls gain form in the room.  
"Where'd you learn to do this?" Willow looks around her in awe. Their conversations usually took place in the dark behind eyelids, images, feelings and words flashing in as required.  
"I mentioned something like it last night; thought I'd give it a shot. I don't know how long I can keep It up, though." Xander shrugs self-effacingly.  
"Very cool." Dawn stamps it with her seal of approval, and the others nod their agreement.  
They look at each other, Xander settling into the armchair opposite his girls, until Willow takes the plunge.  
"So."  
Xander nods reluctantly. "I'm not sure where to start."  
"Just open up?" Buffy suggests. "We'll get an idea of what's going on."  
In spite of what he told Spike, this will be the most invasive trip into Xander's head they've yet experienced. But Xander simply nods, and the girls close their eyes and wait. He watches them for a moment, then just… stops suppressing. Everything he isn't thinking about is suddenly there, in the room with them. The girls flinch, then Dawn grins.  
"I love that part," she purrs.  
"Huh?" Xander asks, confused.  
"Oh, yeah," Willow seconds.  
"Just a tick," Buffy warns, and then there's a strange feeling seeping out from the base of his spine, warmth tickling up his back and down his legs, like a hot bath and twinkies and a 'just because' hug soaking into him.  
"Woah," he murmurs. "What was that?"  
Buffy opens her eyes and grins at him. "Dawn told us you don't feel things the way we do. So I showed you."  
He cocks an eyebrow. "Showed me what?"  
Her grin grows. "Every time you share something, that feeling's there, because it's how you feel about me."  
Willow shakes her head when his brow furrows. "Not the way you see her. But you love us, and we can feel that."  
Xander grins. "Awesome!"  
Willow and Buffy grin back, but Dawn's expression is distant.   
"Guys, I love you too. We doing this?" She asks.  
The three older Scoobies share sheepish expressions and close their eyes, Xander watching as the other three sift through the knotted webwork of his scattershot thoughts.  
"I'm in this one!" Dawn protests after a few minutes. Mostly what they were doing was helping Xander catalogue his emotions, assigning labels to each of the images, removing them from the tangle. The individual impressions were easily dealt with; it was the sheer volume that was overwhelming him.  
"You're in what, Dawn?" Xander asks, following the line of her focus to find himself considering a truly confused set of memories, all dealing with Dawn and Spike. "I didn't even…" He trails off, looking them over.  
"So then," Buffy starts, smirking. "Tell us about Spike."  
Xander rolls his eyes and pretends to laugh.  
"Seriously, Xan," Willow says, pulling all of them out of the tangle of impressions and back into the sitting room.   
Xander sighs and leans back in his chair, suddenly made aware of his physical body, limp in his bed. He shakes the sensation away and considers, as required, Spike.  
"OK," he starts, and opens his link a different direction so that the girls experience his thoughts and feelings even as they hear his words.  
"I'm glad he's back." Even he is surprised at the intensity of his relief, of his happiness, in the memory of opening the door to see Spike reaching for the bell.  
"I hate him for what he did." Buffy on the floor of a bathroom, a microscope in the dark, Anya writhing on a tabletop, an empty seat on a bloody bus.  
"Because he died in the Hellmouth?" Willow asks, no judgment in her tone.  
Xander cocks his head to the side in thought; that last image had surprised him, too. "He… was one of us. In a way that Angel, Anya, Oz, Riley, Tara never were."  
"Really?" Dawn asks. "I mean, he kinda dated Buffy."  
Xander shakes his head. "I didn't mean as a significant other, or whatever. We just seem to only gain people when we start dating. But Spike was a part of all of our lives, y'know?" And the sense of betrayal is suddenly thick enough to choke on. Buffy pokes at it, drawing his attention, and without conscious thought it unfolds: Spike holding against Glory, through the summer when he took on so much for them, nights on patrol, at the Bronze, cold hands smoothing bandages, cool skin under a blood-stained towel, the sharp surge of guilt when Buffy came back, Spike's joy and fear, and then he was pushing, pushing, Xander so confused; the sun sets on Saint Crispin's Day, and the band is buggered indeed.  
Dawn hums in thought. "That's why I was so angry," she nods. "Not because of… what he did to Buffy, but because I forgot he was soulless. He was family, kinda, more of a Scooby than I was, until he reminded me that he wasn't."  
"So why's Dawn involved?" Buffy asks.  
Willow shuffles quickly through the images most heavily imbued with emotion and ventures a guess. "I think, in this case, he's going to be conflicted until he talks to Spike. You've grown up, Xander, since Sunnydale, and I'd guess you want to talk to him. But Dawn's always there, and things are simple between them. Maybe you're jealous of that."  
Xander nods, but there is a quick burst of green-lit envy that he doesn't even seem to notice, almost oppressive in its intensity, and a quick flash of memory – Dawn's long legs around Spike's waist, his face in her hair – paints itself behind closed eyes.  
"Oh, my," Willow almost hums.  
"Huh?" Buffy watches her for a moment before her eyes grow wide. "Oh!"  
Dawn eyeballs them both, then Xander. "Should we –"  
"No." Willow is firm. "He has to figure it out himself."  
"Figure what out?" Xander pleads, thoroughly confused.  
"How to talk to Spike," Willow replies with finality. _


	3. Chapter 3

The rest of the 'spelunking' had gone easily enough, even if the sheer magnitude of the task was rather impressive. Angel and Giles and Cordy, Anya, his handicaps, half-a-dozen other points, and, of course, Spike. The girls assured him that one point of uncertainty didn't hurt them at all, that is was the double-dozen conflicting, unaddressed issues that had caused a problem.  
Emotionally weary, Xander was nonetheless excited about the fight to come. He had claimed his gear from the armory during the afternoon, during his nap. Now it's midnight, time to gear up for a night on the town, Scooby-style.  
First are the boxer-briefs, the Bat-signal stamped across the crotch, because no matter what vampires or Slayers might say, leather and dangly-bits were a non-mixy thing. Then thick socks, and the leather - heavy, worn, black leather jeans that fit him better than his own skin. A long-sleeved, dark blue T-shirt, tight enough that he couldn't be grabbed by it easily. Heavy black steel-toed boots, because the downside of a sword in the foot outweighs the upside of fancy footwork. The spelled leather eyepatch.  
Weapons next, a double-bladed axe on his back, two stakes on one hip, handgun with lead-silver alloy bullets on the other.  
Finally the hand. Xander grins; none of the AI crew had asked about it, so it's was possible that they hadn't noticed. He pushes down the twinge that gives him and instead turns to the chest of fittings. He looks over his options and is struck by a wicked idea.  
He quickly unstraps the axe and removes the harness, swapping it for a slender sheath on a back harness, arranged for a quick neck-draw. Into the sheath he slides three feet of steel, maybe an inch wide and a quarter inch thick at the most, spelled by Willow into near-unbreakable strength and honed by himself into a fierce edge. The smooth hilt is wrapped in leather and has no guard, letting him move as cleanly with his right weapon as he can't with his left.  
Back at his chest he removes what Willow calls "the Wolverine gauntlet" and carefully works his fingers into their rubber-padded metal cup before shifting and locking the studs into their sockets. The Council's medical staff had worked with Willow and the coven to create artificial tendons for the back of his hand. He couldn't control them, but they did allow his fingers to be curled by an outside force. The gauntlet shapes his fingers into a fist, locking onto the sockets that bound the first knuckle of each finger together, and then curves back over his knuckles until it locks into the sockets on the metal band that wraps the small bones in the back of his hand. Three blades curve out like foot-long claws, slightly thinner than the blade of his sword. As an afterthought, he locks a metal-and-leather cuff into the last set of sockets, on his wrist, and fastens it over his pulse-point. He has minimal mobility in his thumb, but enough to tuck it against the curve of his metal-plated fingers. Done up like this he looks more like someone with questionable taste in weaponry than a man with only one working hand. Though his training and the girls' support has done a lot to make him still feel capable, sometimes he likes the illusion. Tonight, going out with three highly qualified hunters in addition to his own team, he likes the illusion a lot.  


///

  
Buffy and Willow are going through their pre-combat checks in the library while Dawn talks to Vi on the phone. Willow is dressed in her usual grey silk tunic and tights, short-cropped hair already a little static-y, a black sling bag over her shoulder with some just-in-case bits and bobs: a stake, case, cell-phone, ID, talismans and a zippo. Buffy is dressed in black, tall boots, leather pants, and a black tank top with 'Bite Me' written in red across the chest. She has a sword on her hip and presumably half-a-dozen stakes secreted somewhere about her person.  
They are doling out weapons to Angel, Spike and Gunn when something happens. All three girls straighten, cracking necks and limbering shoulders. Willow's eyes grow dark with magic even as the Slayer stalks behind Buffy's smile. Dawn's lips pull back into a sly, confident smile as she inform her audience: "This is what being connected to Xander feels like."  
Even as she spoke, the man in question moved into the room. His eye was already hazed hyena-green and his hips rolled as he moved with battle-ready poise.  
"So Wills," he drawls as he takes them all in, eye checking them over carefully. "What time's our flight?"  
"Red light!" Buffy calls before pecking Dawn on the forehead and pushing her into the armchair pulled up to the end of the long table that was already scattered with maps of Cleveland. Dawn nods and waves at the confused LA crew. "Green light!"  
Willow looks around, snaps her fingers, and they're in Cleveland.  


///

  
They'd been on the ground for two hours and things had been going swimmingly. Spike had mocked Xander's choice of weapon - Xander had glared the girls down when they started to defend him - but had admitted to being impressed with his sword play. The girls and Spike were as amazing as ever, and Gunn seemed to be doing pretty damned well with a stake and what was apparently a home-made axe. Angel was slower and weaker than he had been, but not as slow as Xander had expected, and still had over two centuries of experience. Altogether, the demons of Cleveland were screwed.  
"Fuck!" Xander bellows as he sustains the first real injury of the night. He had used his claws to gut a pink, blotchy, giant walking hedgehog just before Dawn let him know the blood was mildly caustic. Mostly he can just wipe it off, but some mixes with his sweat and slips into the gauntlet. "Wills!" He demands.  
"Coming!" She shouts back and runs around the corner, Angel and Spike behind. Buffy is already busy helping Gunn clean sprayed blood from his arms. "Give over," she commands, gesturing towards his hand.  
"Just a… ah." Xander unfastens the sticky gauntlet with a relieved sigh and pulls it off. Small blisters are already popping up where the blood touched, but he holds his metal-bound hand out towards Willow, gauntlet clasped in the other.  
Willow has already spoken a quick cleaning charm over his hand and is looking at the gauntlet when his surprised audience finds their voices.  
"What the bloody hell is that?" Spike demands, shock and repulsion in his tone.  
Buffy punches him in the nose.  
"Not worth it, Buff. But thanks for the sentiment." Xander holds his blistered, metal-bound hand up so Spike has a clear view. "Saved the girl, Wills fixed me up so I can fight. Don't worry, Willy. You won't have to see it again."  
He takes the now-clean gauntlet back from a silent Willow and once more carefully fits his hand into the curve of metal. In his head, the girls send him their best attempts and mental hugs, and all the while Dawn is being enormously and ever-more creative in her threats. Xander chuckles. "Chill, Dawnie. Spike pretty much invented tactless."  
"Oi!" Spike protests, but Angel pops him on the back of the head.  
"You've said enough for the moment," he warns.  
"'S harsh, man." Gunn nods at Xander. "How come I didn't notice it before?"  
Xander grins. "I've got a bunch of fittings for it. I've been using skin-colored ones; one of the witchlings glamoured them for me so they blend right in."  
"Shitty situation, excellent toy. Kill things?"  
"Kill things."  


///

  
"So."  
There's always some big bad who tries to step up when the Cleveland house is under-staffed, and this year it's a vamp looking to juice him up on all that minimally-guarded Slayer blood. The vamp's not completely stupid: he's got an army.  
Six Fyarl for breaking and entering, a handful of Mohra for any real fighting, and a few dozen lesser vampires. There are twenty Slayers at the Academy, along with a few witches and Watchers, so these guys are toast even if they make it out of this warehouse intact. But the Academy might take casualties, and Xander doesn't like that. He's perched on an external catwalk with the others, watching the gaudily ritualized pre-gaming going on inside. He looks at his girls and nods.  
"Buffy at the front, Willow at the back, and I'll take the sub-level door," he points at a door on the far wall, next to the closed and barred loading gate, that stands at the top of a short flight of stairs. "Visitors stay in the peanut gallery."  
"Wait, what?" Gunn is the first to get it; Spike and Angel wouldn't even imagine this fight happening without them.  
"Y'all're playing audience," Willow reiterates.  
"See the Scooby elite doing their thing." Buffy bounces on her toes, then launches herself into a backflip off the scaffolding; the dull blue crackle of Willow's magic meets her at the bottom. The girls move around the building while Xander grins.  
"You guys are backup. If we need you, Will'll let you know. Until then, enjoy the show!" And he jumps to the railing and then forward, catching the end of the fire escape ladder ten feet away. He's remarkably silent as he disappears over the ledge of the roof.  
Spike moves to follow the girls down but Angel stops him with a hand on his shoulder. "We'll just watch for now, see what they can do - "  
"And make one hell of an entrance, soon's they figure out they're in over their heads, Gunn finishes. The three men share a smile and turn back to the window.  
The first person into the warehouse is Xander. He holds the door open slightly as he scans the room, marking his opponents, then lets it slam shut in the same smooth glide that unholsters his handgun and swings it into position. The blast of the gun sounds right after, and the silver and lead bullet drills into a Fyarl's forehead. A second and a third fall even as the demons are gearing up to charge, but then the entire room flickers blue as Buffy launches herself at the first of the Mohra. The hilt of her sword cracks the pulsing gem in its forehead and she turns, vaults over a trio of oncoming vamps, and clamps herself to another Mohra's back.  
Two more Fyarl are quickly taken down and, for a moment, Willow's chanting voice overwhelms the dull roar of battle; it reaches a climas and suddenly fades, leaving the warehouse encompassed in a flickering blue shell - except for the one window to the outside where Angel's team is lurking.  
Willow looks up and winks at them.  
"Bloody hell," Spike murmurs, and Angel can only nod, intent on his lover as she slams a stake into the Mohra's eye and launches herself as he falls, grappling with the vampires that have surrounded her.  
Spike's attention is, for reasons he can't quite fathom, focused on Xander. The final Fyarl is moving towards Willow, who doesn't seem to be doing much of anything but watching, and the boy obviously can't get a clear shot and doesn't want to waste the ammo. Instead he hurls himself from his perch,  
past the cluster of vampires who have finally noticed his presence, and braces himself on a Mohra's shoulder as he kicks up and out to catch another in the forehead with his aforementioned heavy-ass boots. The jewel crumbles. He reclaims his balance with a spin, clawed gauntlet sweeping out to rake across the face of the demon he had used for support, and fires another shot directly into its third eye'  
Four of the best fighters in the demonic world down without inflicting a scratch in less than two minutes. Two to go, but Buffy has them both and Xander moves after the last Fyarl instead, casually slicing off vampire limbs as he passes.  
He lifts his gun to take the shot, but is swept under a pile of at least eight vampires. Spike snarls and Gunn prepares to break the window, but Willow's face, eyes black, turns to them and her command to stay put echoes around them. Spike hisses but does as he is told, eyes locked on Xander as first one, then another vampire is knocked back to hit the floor as a pattern of dust.   
Spike checks quickly on Willow - the Fyarl had almost been upon her when Xander went down - but she's floating ten feet in the air, legs crossed and elbows on her knees, watching the room and ignoring the frustrated demon groping at the air just below her seat.  
Back to Xander, and the shrieking roil of undead that had seemed to overwhelm him is thrown back and he's on his knees, gun thrown aside for the moment, spinning a low circle with claws and blade. There's blood on the side of his face and the strap to his patch is cut because he shakes his head, blood and dust flying, and it comes free and his lost eye is a blaze of furious green and the smile on his face is terrifying.  
"What the hell," Spike breathes and Gunn flashes him a sardonic smile.  
"I take it this is something _else_ you didn't know about your boy?"  
Spike growls but there's another gunshot and through the window Willow is exchanging a thumbs up with Xander who just took out the last Fyarl. Buffy's finished with the Mohra demons so, as Xander holsters his gun and picks his sword up from the floor, it's the two of them against two dozen vampires.  
It hardly seems fair.  


///

  
"So, Whelp, what kinda mojo'd Red fix you up with?"   
Xander hadn't spoken the rest of the night, hadn't done much besides exchange quick, wolfish grins with his girls - and Gunn, and Angel, even! - and fight like a damned dervish with that green eye blazing. Not even a look in Spike's direction and he's had more than enough of it.  
"Didn't," is all he gets by way of reply.  
"Beg to differ, seeing as you're lit up like a bloody beacon." His frustration comes out as anger and Xander shies away slightly.  
"Sorry," he mutters.  
"Not what I meant," Spike sighs. "'S just, if Red didn't do it, then what's going on?"  
Xander watches him for a moment, face forward enough that Spike can't see anything of the phantom eye other than Xander's sharply illuminated profile. "Hyena."  
Angel stops Xander with a hand on his shoulder and when he asks "It came back?" his face is appalled.  
"What's this, then?" Spike asks, keenly interested all of a sudden.  
Xander rolls his eyes. "Willow!"  
She fades back from Gunn and Buffy and slips beside him.   
"Hyena. Explain." He points at Angel and Spike, and Willow nods.  
"Go grunt at Buffy," she orders, and he lopes ahead, catching Buffy around the waist and snugging her to his side. Willow looks up into two expectant faces, one worried, and sighs.  
"Repossessed by primal spirit as part of some ritual of self-worth when he was collecting Slayers in Burundi. Whatever Caleb did with his little facial reconstruction activated some kind of - we think Hellmouth-induced - empathic power that had been mostly latent. He used that to bind the hyena to him, this time, so he stays in control. Too much fun, though, and he gets kinda non-verbal. Okay?"  
"But - " Angel starts, but she cuts him off sharply.  
"Nuh-uh. He's safe, he's good, and you're totally killing my battle buzz." With that she turns away and jogs after her friends, tucking herself under Xander's other arm.  
"Huh." Spike says, watching the trio. "This happened before?"  
Angel nods. "Few months after I met him, he was caught in some spirit-transference ritual at the zoo. Ended up the leader of a pack of wild children."  
"Peter Pan style?"  
Angel shakes his head. "They ate the principal."  
Spike whistles. "Good on ya, mate."  
"Hey!" Xander's voice carries back to them. "I only ate the damn pig!" 


End file.
